As usage of the Internet evolves, there has tended to be an increasing prevalence of high-data rate applications, such as streaming video. The ability of communications service providers to serve consumers with data-intensive content can be limited by variations in capacity and demand across the communications infrastructure. For example, network resource demand can spike during peak usage times of day, capacity in certain regions can be impacted by weather (e.g., rain fade, etc.), consumers in certain regions may have access to different infrastructures (e.g., fiber, satellite, etc.), and/or the ability to meet demand can change based on other conditions.
It is becoming more common for users to desire to consume streaming media content while in transit (e.g., on mobile devices, like mobile phones, laptop computers, tablet computers, integrated media terminals, or other in-transport terminals; and/or in context of a car, airplane, bus, cruise ship, or other transport craft). Maintaining provision of communications services to mobile terminals can involve handing off the connection with the content provider network among multiple wireless links (e.g., multiple spot beams or cells), contending with changing connection quality (e.g., as a terminal changes its position relative to spot beams or cells, to sources of interference, etc.), adapting to changing network resource supply and/or demand (e.g., user demand in a particular spot beam coverage area at a particular time, etc.), and other difficulties. These and other attributes of in-transport content delivery can frustrate the network operator's ability to maintain quality of service to the mobile terminals, particularly in context of aircraft and/or other transport craft that tend to travel over a relatively large area of the network in a relatively short time.